


These Hands Stained Red

by slybrunette, waltzmatildah



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-12
Updated: 2011-04-12
Packaged: 2017-10-17 23:37:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/182573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slybrunette/pseuds/slybrunette, https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltzmatildah/pseuds/waltzmatildah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the beginning, Slybrunette wrote this brilliant fic <a href="http://slybrunette.livejournal.com/364777.html">A History Of Violence</a>. <i>These Hands Stained Red</i> is an immediate continuation of that story.</p><div class="center">Warning: Part 1 contains violence. Part 2 contains violent imagery and sex.</div><p><i>He always was well versed in the art of drowning sorrows around split lips.</i>  This is Alex's POV of what happened in 'A History of Violence'; its effect on him and the messy aftermath he shares with Cristina.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Hands Stained Red

He's more than half way to Joe's when the irony of what he's about to do stops him cold. The only difference would be that he punched a man first.

The alcohol would be the result, not the mitigating cause.

He digs his heels in and walks away. Refuses to fulfill one more badly mapped prophecy.

There is a floorboard three paces from the fireplace in the den at Meredith's. It creaks wearily every time his weight passes over it. The lights are off, the fridge hums, cars pass outside fogged windows, his own heart beat marches thickly in his chest.

He runs when the pacing isn't loud enough anymore. His breath billows, thick white clouds that consume his forward momentum, sweats freezes on his chest, worn cross trainers slap at pavement puddles, catch on cracks, threaten to send him heavily to the ground more than once, skun knees and stinging palms.

She's there when he gets back, in the den that he'd paced compulsively until he'd screamed. The lights are still off. The fridge still hums. The cars passing outside the fogged windows are less frequent now.

The driveway is empty save for his own beat up Jeep.

He opens the fridge, bathes the kitchen in pale yellow, imagines his own eyes, falsely lit, macabre. There's beer on the bottom shelf. There's always beer on the bottom shelf. He reaches for the closest bottle before hesitating and wrapping his fingers tightly around the neck of a second.

He pops them both open with a reassuring hiss, starts towards the now flickering light of the muted television, stops to reconsider. Back in the kitchen he pokes a straw into the opening of one of the bottles.

He always was well versed in the art of drowning sorrows around split lips.

He's a little out of practice but... it'll come. It always does.

She raises dark eyebrows when he settles his weight beside hers on the sofa; at him or the beer or the straw bobbing in the neck of the bottle he's offering her, he's not entirely sure. He settles on the straw because it's the lesser of his current evils.

“Just trust me,” he monotones, lifting his own bottle haltingly, feeling the grinding creak of his elbow and the tight clench of his stomach.

“Uh, so... today was kinda full on. Sorry it got you suspended.” Her voice is a mirror inside his skull, it echoes before fading.

He shrugs, considers a _whatever_ , has enough sense to bite down on it hard.

“I'm not going to go back... I know...” She falters uncharacteristically before starting again, her words ice the blood in his veins. “You know it was an accident, right? I mean, it's fucked up but he didn't really mean it. It's different, I know you've-”

She cuts herself off abruptly as he breathes twice, deeply, eyes shut, forcing a calm that not a single inch of him believes.

“Don't make excuses, Yang, it doesn't suit you. Besides, it all adds up to the same thing in the end.” Duck and run.

Just so he doesn't have to consider what it is that she thinks she knows.

Because _fucked up_ doesn't even come close but tonight will not be about any of that.

 

 

*

 

 

There's a dull ache in his right hand. The kind of ache that he knows from experience will need longer to heal than the one week suspension he's landed himself. The knuckle at the base of his middle finger is split, stinging sharply in protest at the stretch required to grip his beer. In his peripheral vision she's running the pads of her fingertips along the length of her bottom lip, bouncing tentatively over the scabbed abrasion before flattening again into the sharp corners, out then back. Bounce, flatten, flatten, bounce.

With the middle element missing it's easy suddenly to equate his own split skin with hers, lines blurred, action and reaction with little recourse to consequence. Nausea roils in the pit of his stomach.

“Alex?”

“I-” The rest of the sentence dies in his throat. Consonants and vowels coat his tongue like lies until he gags around them.

His beer is horizontal on the coffee table, amber bubbles frothing over its dark wooden lip to puddle lazily on the worn rug below. She's staring at him, mouth moving soundlessly under the stormy roar of the sea in his ears, under the body-rocking thud of his own defiant heartbeat.

He's at the bathroom before he registers the movement of his feet. His stomach is empty before he thinks to check that the seat is raised.

After, he grips the washbasin, vice-like, and squats until his forehead can bounce solidly against the cool enamel of the bowl. The dull ache in his hand reverberates suddenly, sharply, to his back teeth.

If he looks high enough through his lashes he can see her reflection, liquid and disjointed, in the water marked mirror above him. The look on her face is a twisted hybrid of concerned scorn and confused pity so he stops looking.

This was never meant to be about him.

 

 

*

 

 

“Karev?”

“Don't.” He loosens his grip enough to give her a dismissive wave but doesn't turn his head. His voice, thick with saliva and acrid bile, echoes pitifully in the small space. He hears movement, shuffled steps across a mat that's seen more than its fair share of messy aftermaths, before a toe nudges his side insistently. He's so grateful that she's not speaking that he relents and turns, uses the back of his hand to wipe unspeakable fluids from his lips and chin.

She's holding out her beer, a peace offering of sorts, straw now settled calmly in the room temperature liquid. He takes it for what it is, swills a mouthful through his teeth before spitting it sloppily back into the basin.

They're well and truly past a charade of privacy and manners.

“You okay?”

He hates that she feels the need to ask. Hates even more that he's not sure what the correct answer is. He settles on a slow nod that she can interpret however she likes and makes a move to stand.

 

 

*

 

 

His fingers are at her lips, shaking lightly and cold against her skin, he can't remember how they got there. She shudders but doesn't flinch and he's not sure what to make of the fact that he was expecting she would.

She's not intimidated by him, he can take a certain degree of comfort from that.

Her tongue flicks suddenly, lips parted, breath hot and beer stale against his palm.

“Does it turn you on? The blood?”

Something in his chest pops and he struggles to shake his head, no. No. Nerve endings screaming. Raw and raging. _Hell no._

“Well, too fucking bad.”

Her hands twine through his hair and pull his face towards hers with a strength that he'd underestimated. His breath hitches somewhere in his failing lungs as the tip of her tongue catches his, forces it aside, makes contact with the inside of his mouth.

He's self conscious of how he must taste but she's turning him towards the wall, pressing his back, his hips, into the metal towel rail. It whines out a protest but ultimately doesn't budge, grounding him with a pressure that's only _almost_ painful. The copper tang of her blood is blinding, he clamps down on a familiar rise of nausea and disgust to slide his hands, sweat slippery and shaking, under the thin fabric of her shirt.

She is leaving him in no doubt.

Tequila is not her drug of choice, straw sipped beer will not soothe away her hurt and, despite the fact that he knows it's wrong, dysfunctional, plain _fucked up_ on so many levels, he also understands completely. More than he's ever likely to admit.

 

 

*

 

 

She moans his last name, throaty and low, and she's doing something with her hips that's leaving him devoid of all coherent thought. Her jeans make a denim pool against the base of the bathroom door and her underwear is at her ankles as she pulls at his shirt, sweat damp and sticky. He's a by-stander to her rituals, she manipulates his limbs, distorts his shape, twists him into exactly what she needs.

He whispers constantly, a litany of breathless syllables strung together with no sense of reason, muffled only by the blanket of her thick black curls.

She masks the steady drag of her fingernails down his back with a whisper of her own, adamant and fierce. His spine arches in response.

“Shut up and fuck me.”

He pushes back against her, uses the change in momentum to wrap an arm around the back of her legs, lifts her just enough inches to rectify the space between them.

Does as she'd asked.

 

 

*

 

 

He hears the front door slam shut, glass panes rattle, a thick winter coat hits the floor, discarded in haste. He grins at her and shrugs, feigns a degree of casual that almost feels like home.

“You good?”

They share a look, seal a pact, no need for words. She nods.

He closes his bedroom door with a soft thud, leans his forehead against the smooth wood as her footsteps sound on the stairs, “Meredith? Is that you?”

The End


End file.
